


Angel and That Pesky Curse - How one group of writer's dealt with a writing trap

by shadowkat67



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (TV)
Genre: Gen, Meta, Meta Essay, Other, non-fiction
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-20
Updated: 2020-01-20
Packaged: 2021-02-27 15:54:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,295
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22339615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shadowkat67/pseuds/shadowkat67
Summary: This essay comes from a blog post on https://shadowkat.dreamwidth.org/486729.html.  It is about how Joss Whedon and his writing team handled the characterization of vampires in their series, post Angel. Angel was a vampire cursed with a soul, who was ambivalently good ensouled, and completely evil without a soul. The soul acted as a sort of conscience. But, this posed a problem when other vampires were introduced. In addition, it posed a problem in regards to Angel's relationship with Buffy - since pure happiness rendered him evil. The essay explores how this was handled in the series -- and how similar writing traps can be be worked around.
Kudos: 6
Collections: March Meta Matters Challenge





	Angel and That Pesky Curse - How one group of writer's dealt with a writing trap

Not sure how many people reading this journal are fiction writers? If you are, regardless of the fiction, you probably at one point or another fell in love with a specific theme or plot idea and ended up writing yourself into a corner that you could not get out of because of it. Sure it was a brilliant idea at the time. But now, dang it, you are stuck. And your options are limited. You can either give up on the fic entirely. Continue with it and see if you can write your way out of it. Go with the flow so to speak. Or take an easy way out and either retcon or do some sort of reset button.

In 1997, Joss Whedon created a show entitled Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He had etched out about thirteen episodes - that would tie up all the plot threads for the first season, because he did not believe it would get renewed. The series was a mid-season replacement and had gotten derisive industry buzz because of the movie that preceeded it and bombed, financially. Originally, Angel was supposed to die the first season, but Whedon changed his mind and realized that it would be too complicated to pull off. When the series got renewed for a second season, surprise, surprise - Whedon and Greenwalt came up with a twenty-two episode plot arc - culminating in Angel's death by Buffy, the heroine's hands.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer was his first television series and a chance to redo the movie that had bombed, right. The story was to take place in high school - and to be marketed mainly at teen girls. The central metaphor was high school is hell - he envisioned it as a hip horror series featuring a young girl as the heroine. And the demons were metaphors for the horrors of highschool and teen life - the horrors teens fear, and must slay to reach adulthood.

In the series, Whedon chose to make vampires evil - none of this gothic pretty boy crap. Except, he did create one handsome vampire, Angel, who he cursed with a soul. Angel was originally set to die after about 22 episodes, either at the end of the first or second season. The curse enacted by a bunch of gypsies had placed what amounted to a soul inside Angel, the soul was the equivalent of a conscience, it made Angel feel remorse for the evil things he had done and in effect - made Angel good, someone Buffy thought she could trust and whom the others thought they could trust. Unbeknowest to Buffy and her friends, if Angel had one moment of true happiness - the soul would leave his body and he would revert to his former self - pure evil. This moment happened when Buffy and Angel made love or had sex.

It was conceptually the perfect metaphor - the girl sleeps with the guy and the next morning he turns all evil. It is what every teenage girl fears most when they consider sleeping with the guy. And since, Whedon planned on killing Angel off for good at the end of Season 2 - it was not a problem.

But this is television, and ratings, viewer response, network response, and how actors relate to the material - changes your mind. Each episode is written rapidly and produced even faster. You don't get to go back and change the episodes once they air. This isn't the same as writing a novel or a movie. If you don't like chapter one? Tough. It's out there. Deal. So, when Whedon and David Greenwalt were told that the network wanted another series from them and saw that Angel not only had a huge fan following, but the actor could potentially handle the task - he turned out, from their perspective to be more than just another pretty boy - they decided not to kill him after all.

This however posed a bit of a problem from a writing perspective. They'd given him this pesky curse. A curse that limited what they could do with Angel and any other vampire characters they chose to introduce. Because in a fantasy or sci-fi television show, movie or novel you cannot change the rules halfway through without losing your audience. So they were more or less stuck with the fact that vampires are evil without souls. And the curse will be undone if Buffy and Angel ever sleep together. This rule worked great as long as they stuck with high school - lots of lovely metaphors to play with and teens tend to be pretty black and white in the morality. But if you want to move beyond that scope and deal with broader and dicier themes, more interesting themes at least from a writing perspective - you are a bit stuck.

What to do? They chose in the third season to explore how the curse demonstrated that Buffy/Angel were the great love that you may have had in high school, that first wonderful love, that was all hearts and flowers and angst, but you can't for whatever reason consummate, and eventually have to move on from. But because you couldn't ever consummate it or resolve it in a definite way - it haunts you, you look back on it and that person with a fondness that lives on your child's heart. You don't want to be with them now. And you most likely will never see them again. Or if you do, they are married and completely unavailable, but that doesn't prevent you from daydreaming from time to time about what might have been. And you do wish - you could have consummated your affair, but again you were too young and there were obstacles that prevented you from doing so. It's the great love that doesn't last, which you leave behind the moment you graduate from high school, and will forever look back on with a sort of ache or yearning. According to the commentary in the DVD - that was the metaphor they were going for, and they bent over backwards that season explaining it. In interviews, the writers state that they still to this day get letters from fans pleading with them to put Buffy and Angel back together - because, the writers state with wry amusement, a lot of people identified with that dream...of the lost high school love that you thought and perhaps still do, was your true love, forever lost to the winds of time. But with an adult's eyes, realize would never have worked because like it or not, you went on different paths. This was stated to great effect in Amends and Lover's Walk. As well as Helpless, Prom, Graduation Day, and several episodes. They really did go over board with their message.]

So, okay, great, now Angel moves onto his own series. And you decide to re-introduce Spike but not as a villain, who you spend each season failing to kill. You want to do more with him than that. What to do? You have the pesky curse, which was such a great metaphor in Seasons 1-3 but now, suffice it to say is a pain your rear-end. Well, you have numerous options: 1) curse Spike with a soul, 2) Undo the curse on Angel 3)make Angel and Spike human, 4) explore the curse and write your way through it.

The writers, to give them credit, chose the hard way. The first three options are the easy way out. A choice that I'm guessing most of us probably would have picked. The hard way requires a bit more thought and a lot more work, and is more prone to pitfalls.

What they did was explore how the curse defined Angel as a character within his own show. Why did Angel get cursed to begin with? What did the curse mean? Was it just sex that gave him the happy? Sex with a specific person? And was Angelus really all that different than Angel? Were they really Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde? The curse over time become more than a metaphorical way to keep Angel from being with his alleged one true love. It became a metaphor for Angel's odd co-dependent and at times tug-and-pull relationship with authority figures, father figures, and possibly god. Am I a puppet to be pulled to and throw by forces beyond my control, by those around me? Or am I my own man? And to what degree am I furthering this cycle? The more we found out about Angelus and Angel, his particular brand of evil and what motivated him, the more ironic the curse became. Angel/Angelus the ultimate control freak - the monster who carved people into versions of himself, had been changed by a curse. A curse that he could not or refused to overcome by himself. It was done to him, he thought, so it had to be undone by others. Angelus would never seek out his soul - because that would mean being under another's control, being bound by rules, by dictates - yet ironically never seeking out his soul, makes him the minion of others, controlled by others. Angel won't let the curse be undone randomly - like being turned human by accident - because that meant he hadn't earned it. He didn't deserve it. So to him it is meaningless.

Young Liam, we learn through flashbacks in episodes such as Dear Boy and Becoming, as well as in episodes as early as Season 1, Angel, and Season 3 Amends - desperately needed the approval of his father. And as Angelus, the approval of the Master. He rebells against both, but still seeks their approval. The Master he lurks near. It's not Buffy he follows to Sunnydale, so much as it is the Master - which is revealed in The Wish. If it had been Buffy he had been following, Angel would have ended up in Cleveand in that universe, not in Sunnydale - the Master's enslaved dog. And in Becoming - it is not Buffy or her friends he seeks out and enjoys torturing, but Giles - as it is Giles that he seeks forgiveness from and approval in Amends, as well as earlier in Prophecy Girl. When he's denied it, he sluffs off.

Ironically, like most children who need their father's approval - Angel and Angelus, they have this in common regardless of the soul - inflict the same requirements on those who they consider their children or protegee. Spike, Dru and Connor - Angel and Angelus attempt to carve in their own image, much as Liam accuses his father of doing to him, and what he knows full well the Master did do with Angelus. With the curse - Angel no longer rails at human or vampire fathers, he rails at the Gods, below and above - in the form of the ever silent Powers that Be, and the incredibly vocal Wolf Ram and Hart. He has, without meaning to, become their puppet - ironically constrained by strings he himself has strung during his life. As Darla tells him in Dear Boy, now that you've killed your father, you are doomed to be defined by him. And so he is...first with Holtz, then the Master, then Giles, and finally the PTB and WRH. He is also, likewise, doomed to become like his father - controlling, desiring to carve others into his image, to bear his own legacy. Angel has constructed his own punishment, and holds onto his own curse.

That's a clever way of handling that pesky curse. Instead of taking the easy, comfortable route, the writers chose to do the horrific one. The one that makes us squirm. The one that makes us most uncomfortable and dissatisfied. The one that does not provide Angel with a happy ending. It's noir horror ending, with the hero doomed to forever repeat the same mistakes over and over again.

The other choice they made regarding the curse - was instead of making Spike human or cursing him with a soul or just letting him be the evil villian - all of which are relatively easy writing choices, and ones many fans wanted. They chose the hard route for themselves as writers - which was what would happen if we gave Spike a man-made soul or conscience - a chip, a la Clockwork Orange? How would that change the character? What would he do if he couldn't kill humans without feeling intense pain? And would it really work as a conscience? Can it? Also to what degree is doing such a thing ethical? What are the ethics involved? As Buffy states in S7 to Giles - putting the chip in his head, means he has no choice. He can't ever choose to be good. He can't ever really change. It's like putting him in a cage or a leash. He's a puppet. And he hasn't chosen to be one.

**(It is to an extent a commentary on Buffy and Willow's choice to reinsoul Angel - to what extent - we are asked, is the decision to curse Angel with a soul in season 2 any different than the decision to rechip Spike? The curse to put a soul in Angel we are told early on is a blood vengeance curse - it is not good, it is not justice. It is vengeance, designed to hurt Angel. So it is - literally black magic. That's why Willow's eyes go black when she does it. Also, by doing that curse in S2 - Willow opened a door she could not shut. She was severly injured at the time. So the magics were able to work their will. She did not have the ability or the maturity to resist or control them that Miss Calendar may have or Giles. Willow's calling of those magics - is in a way not that different than Giles calling with Ethan Rayne of the demon Eygor, and like Giles - Willow pays the price much much later for cursing Angel. When she does it again in Angel S4 - she also almost gets hurt, and her eyes turn black. But this time, at least she can control it. But is it the right thing to do? As she does it - Angel confronts Angelus in Angelus' nightmares and the two fight it out, with Faith watching and realizing that they are in a way the same, and Angelus proves it by not fading so much as merely jumping into Angel. Willow's re-ensoulment however does not free Angel from the binds of the curse. Angel is, in a way, no different than Spike was with his chip - his demon is harnessed, held back, but not by choice.)

The second risk the writers take and this is a dousey, one not all the writers agreed with at the time - was to have Spike seek his own soul. It does fit the character - who from the beginning was written as bit of risk taker, someone who carved out his own nitch and rebelled. The Rebel Without A Cause. Unlike Angel, Spike does not want his father's approval or he does, but scorns it as well. He is in some respects a great deal like Giles - rebelling against who he was, how he was brought up, what his parents wanted him to become, yet never quite able to get past it. By having Spike seek his soul - the writer's ask the question, why would someone want a conscience? Want to be good? Would it be for love? Would it be to prove something to others? Or do we want to be good for ourselves? Why are we good? Why do we try to help others? Where do we get our morals from? And how do we seek them? Does morality come from parents? From peers? From education? And to what extent does romantic love play a role if any? What makes us good, what makes us evil? Can we redeem ourselves? Does one or many acts doom us forever? Does it depend on why we did them? Does it matter?

Without taking the risk - these questions could not be answered or even put forth. They don't necessarily answer them. Spike seeks his soul to be a better man, true. But he also does it for the approval of Buffy. Unlike Angel, who already has Buffy's love and approval and does not feel the need to seek it. Spike does not. There may be another reason - perhaps to be more like Angel, someone he has clearly since the beginning patterned himself after, however begrudgingly - as younger brothers or siblings are apt to do. (Whedon remember has his own younger brother - Jed, who hero-worshipped him, fought him, and emulated him.) And yet, at the same time, to go on his own path and prove to Angel and to himself that he is nothing like Angel, that he is in fact better than Angel, a better man. Whether he is or isn't is not the question here. It's that he wants to be. And perhaps the final motivation lies with who he had once been, and what he was feeling when he was turned by Drusilla long ago...I may be a bad writer, he tells Cecily, but I'm a good man. Give me that at least. A man who preferred art, beauty and poetry to violence, but may well have been only repressing it - for Dru opens the vein and the violence inside is unleashed on a multitude - only to be quenched after years of mayhem by the Initiative and finally his love for Buffy. The other question asked is to what degree does love motivate? Can it change us? Does it?

The horror in the twist, is that Spike changes himself, but only to die, to burn in front of her - consumed by his soul, turned to a blaze by an amulet provided by the brother he wised to emulate and the woman he wished to love. It's a painful death but also one that is to an extent chosen by him. For Spike chooses his own fate, it does not choose him. But it is not necessarily a kind fate. Nor an unlonely one.

Spike seeking his soul, much as Angel being cursed are choices steeped in irony. If you think about it. Spike - who tells Angel that demons don't change. That Angel is the slayer's lap dog, the slayer's whipping boy. Spike who is his own man. He scoffs at the nancy boy, the poof that ensouled Angel has become, that he, William, was - yet he chooses his soul and literally for a brief period, for Buffy, until she kicks him out of it, reverts to it. Both men do and choose what they are loath to do. Angel/Angelus the ultimate control freak, the leader, man of action, chooses to be a puppet - at the whim of others, waiting for some higher being to shanshue him or free him from his curse. Spike - the bad boy, the rebel, chooses to sacrifice himself for the girl, to become the man he scoffed at, to get a conscience which is a far harder than to shake, and far more painful than a chip.

It's a clever way to write onself out of a corner - I think. And one we, as writers, can learn from. To take the risk. To try the hardest path. To do to our characters what we fear most. To scare ourselves and our readers silly. To be as cruel to our characters as we can be, without killing them. To explore their foibles, their flaws, in order to find their strengths and through them to examine our own, to examine what makes us tick, and where the line if there is one can be drawn between good and evil - and what justifications and rationalizations or lies that we tell ourselves to believe we are good, strong, and capable.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. The essay incorporates this note from moscowatcher:
> 
> Date: 2009-04-28 06:20 am (local)  
> ext_7259: (Default)  
> From: [identity profile] moscow-watcher.livejournal.com IP Address: (91.76.110.199)  
> Brilliant essay. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts.
> 
> He had etched out about twenty-two episodes or a plot arc that stretched across two seasons.
> 
> I clearly remember reading in some Joss' interview that he was so sure the show won't get the second season that he intentionally wrapped up all the storylines. Only when they got renewed, they came up with the idea of the soul and Angel turning into Angelus.
> 
> They chose the hard route for themselves as writers - which was what would happen if we gave Spike a man-made soul or conscience - a chip, a la Clockwork Orange? How would that change the character? What would he do if he couldn't kill humans without feeling intense pain? And would it really work as a conscience? Can it? Also to what degree is doing such a thing ethical? What are the ethics involved?
> 
> In hindsight, it's extremely interesting to compare this "mechanical" programming of human behavior to hi-tech programming in Dollhouse. I don't think that Joss consciously decided to explore the idea of the chip further but, definitely, the possibility to program human behavior is something that fascinates Joss a lot.
> 
> 2.While I admittedly did not take the time to provide you with nifty links to interviews or actual quotes, you can find most of this on the DVD commentaries. The bit about the B/A relationship in Season 3 can be found on the Season 3 Overview feature. Other comments I read in assorted interviews with the writers, many of which I transcribed on the ALL THINGS PHILOSOPHICAL ABOUT BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER & ANGEL THE SERIES (aka APTOBTVS) board back in the day, as well as wrote in an essay on the tv genre, which will be posted separately due to length. (The board's archive is still available online go here to find the site, various essays and archives: http://www.atpobtvs.com/


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